Pocono Raceway lightning strike witness recounts giving CPR to victim

He didn't expect to go to a NASCAR race and save someone's life. But that's what Nate Trolio may have done. The 27-year-old from Moosic witnessed the lighting strike that killed one man and injured eight others Sunday at Pocono Raceway from about 20 feet away.

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By MICHAEL SADOWSKI

poconorecord.com

By MICHAEL SADOWSKI

Posted Aug. 10, 2012 at 4:47 PM

By MICHAEL SADOWSKI
Posted Aug. 10, 2012 at 4:47 PM

» Social News

He didn't expect to go to a NASCAR race and save someone's life. But that's what Nate Trolio may have done.

The 27-year-old from Moosic witnessed the lighting strike that killed one man and injured eight others Sunday at Pocono Raceway from about 20 feet away.

He jumped out of the car that provided him shelter, saw a man in his 20s on the ground unconscious and started giving him CPR.

Within a minute, the unidentified man — Trolio still doesn't know who he is — came to and started coughing before paramedics whisked him away to the hospital.

“He had no color in his face or in his skin,” Trolio said. “He was just laying there. That's when I realized he got hit by the lighting. I gave him CPR, and you could see the color coming back to his face when he woke up.”

Trolio was one of the thousands of people who fled from the Pocono Raceway grandstands when he saw the radar report on his friend's phone showing the storm bearing down on the track. He and three friends made it back to their cars in time before the storm and the lightning hit.

The people in front of his car, however, weren't as lucky. He said he didn't see the lightning, but “felt it.”

When he looked around, he saw the people on the ground, hastily jumped from his car amid the lightning bolts and started CPR.

He had learned CPR in high school, but never had to use it.

“I don't know what came over me,” he said. “It probably wasn't the smartest thing to do (running in the lightning). But I wasn't even thinking. You see that kind of stuff on hospital shows, but this was the real thing. It's something I'm going to remember for the rest of my life.”